JCSE, vol. 3, no. 1, pp.59-71, 2009

DOI:

Optimizing Instruction Prefetching to Improve Worst-Case Performance for Real-Time Applications

Yiqiang Ding, Jun Yan, Wei Zhang
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, USA

Abstract: While the average-case performance is important for general-purpose applications, worst-caseperformance is crucial for real-time systems to ensure schedulability and reliability. Recentwork has shown that simple prefetching techniques such as the Next-N-Line prefetching canbenefit both average-case and worst-case performance; however, the improvement on the worst-case execution time (WCET) is rather limited and inefficient. This paper presents two instruc-tion prefetching approaches that are specially designed to enhance the worst-case performance,including the loop-based prefetching and WCET-oriented prefetching. Our experiments indicatethat both instruction prefetching techniques can achieve better worst-case execution cycles thanthe Next-N-Line prefetching while having various impacts on the average-case performance.

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